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Tuesday, April 17, 2012

"The Writer's Voice" Details

“The Writer’s Voice” is a multi-blog, multi-agent contest
hosted by Cupid of Cupid’s Literary Connection, Brenda Drake of Brenda Drake Writes, Monica B.W. of Love YA, and me. We’re basing it on NBC’s singing reality show The Voice, so the four
of us will serve as coaches and select projects for our teams based on their
queries and first pages.

Here’s the timeline:

May 3

Everyone submits their entries

May 3-10

We select our team members from “The Writer’s Voice” Blogfest

May 10-17

We coach our team members, helping them polish their
entries

May 17

We post our team members’ entries on our blogs

May 21

Agents vote for their favorites

Submissions

To enter, your manuscript must meet two conditions: First,
it must be COMPLETE, POLISHED, AND READY TO QUERY, and second, it must be in
one of the following genres:

We’ll accept entries in two time slots. The first submission
window will open at 9:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday, May 3, and will close once we
receive 75 entries. The second submission window will open at 9:00 p.m. EDT on
the same day and will close once we receive another 75 entries.

We’ll accept submissions via one of Mister Linky’s Magical
Widgets, which we’ll post on all four of our blogs on May 3. Once you sign up
for the blogfest, you’ll post YOUR QUERY and THE FIRST 250 WORDS of your
manuscript on your blog. Then you’ll send your query, first 250 words, and A
LINK TO YOUR BLOG POST in the body of an e-mail to
TheWritersVoiceContest(at)gmail(dot)com, with your blogfest number, title, and
genre in the subject line.

In summary, you must follow these three steps to enter:

1. Sign up for the blogfest during one of the submission
windows listed above.
2. Post your query and the first 250 words of your
manuscript on your blog.
3. Send your query, first 250 words, and a link to your blog
post to TheWritersVoiceContest(at)gmail(dot)com, with your blogfest number,
title, and genre in the subject line.

Selections

We’re building our teams via “The Writer’s Voice” Blogfest,
so YOU MUST HAVE A BLOG TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS CONTEST. We don’t care if you’ve
had it for five years or five minutes; we just want to be able to fight over
you in public:)

We coaches will review the entries by e-mail, but when we
find one we want, we’ll leave a comment on your post that says something like,
“I want you!” If more than one of us wants you on her team, you’ll have to pick
which coach you want to work with.

Coaching

We’ll select our 10 team members by May 10, then spend the
next week helping them put a final polish on their entries. You won’t have to
take all of our suggestions, of course; we just want to help you make your
entry the best that it can be before the agents get a look at it.

Voting

On May 17, we’ll post our team members’ queries and first
pages on our blogs so that the agents can review them. Here are the 8 awesome
agents who’ll be voting on your entries:

The agents will vote for their favorites on May 21. Each
vote will count as a partial or full request depending on how many votes the
entry receives. If an entry receives 1 or 2 votes, those votes will count as
partial requests. If an entry receives 3 or more votes, those votes will count
as full requests.

Voting will stay open for twenty-four hours, at which point
we’ll determine which coach’s team received the most votes. That coach will win
bragging rights for time immemorial, and everyone who received requests will be
able to submit their materials to all the agents who voted for them.

So get those queries and first pages polished up, then meet
us back here on Thursday, May 3, at either 9:00 a.m. or 9:00 p.m. EDT. We can’t
wait to read your entries! (And of course, if you have any questions, feel free
to ask them in the comments below.)

Brandi, it's a scary but fun thing for us coaches, too:) On the one hand, we have to get through 150 entries in less than a week. But on the other, we get to meet a bunch of awesome writers and projects!

You're welcome, Kaitlin! Looking forward to it!

Linda, I just got into the TV show The Voice this season. When Cupid suggested teaming up to host a multi-blog contest sometime, I knew we had to use this format:)

You're welcome, Katie! We're looking forward to it. And of all the judges on The Voice, I'd hope I'm most like Adam. I appreciate how he delivers his honest opinion in such a friendly, constructive way. His comments are never meant to wound, only help, and I almost always agree with him.

Are there any prerequisites to how we post it on our blog? Should it just be plain, just the query and 250 words. Or should we introduce the contest first. Or can we do whatever we like with it as long is it has the query and 250 words?

And if I post 272 words, since that's the end of a paragraph, is that okay? Or should it be under the 250?

Stacey, as long as your query and first 250 are clearly defined, we don't really care how you post it:) We're actually going to be reading all the entries via e-mail, anyway; we just want to be able to fight over you in public.

As for the length of your first page, we would rather you cut it off at the end of the sentence that includes the 250th word instead of at the end of the paragraph. (If you'd rather cut it off a little earlier, just to create a more dramatic finish, that's fine, too.)

Yes, Drew, we'll leave a comment on your blog post that says something like, "I want you!" And we may leave those comments anytime between now and May 12. (We gave ourselves another couple of days due to the extra entries.)